Device-to-device (D2D) communications are supported under 3GPP LTE (short for third-generation partnership project—long-term evolution), and companies are developing methods for distributed scheduling operations between the devices.
Distributed scheduling in D2D communications is a channel allocation mechanism where channel request and allocation are done, not by a central device, but by a pair of transmitter and receiver devices themselves. With this mechanism, multiple pairs of devices can share the channel resources. One prior art solution employs tone matrix-based distributed scheduling. The proposed solution, however, does not scale well with the number of transmitters and receivers in the transmission space.
Thus, there is a continuing need for a tone matrix-based D2D scheduling mechanism that overcomes the shortcomings of the prior art.